Kevin Williams:
Well again, it goes back to how you organize the assets. You need to be able to present the songs themselves, your lyrics written out, your catalog organized and databased in such a way that it's very tight, cohesive and organized. And you can just give it to somebody and say, "Here." It's organized in such a way that they can literally just look at a spreadsheet, let's say, look at all your songs, they could be categorized if you think you write in different styles, for instance. Don't have to hunt for anything, don't have to search for anything, it's all presented in a certain way.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry, with constantly changing technology, and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and slowly getting better. If you have high-quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right, I'm excited to be here again with my friend, Kevin Williams. Kevin is the Chief Community Officer for Sessionwire, which is a software tool that... Super cool, it helps artists and producers to collaborate on sessions remotely so that you can get high-quality recordings from around the world with top-level producers, even if there's like a global pandemic or something preventing you from getting together in-person, super cool. Been featured on CBS, NBC, The Verge, The Nam Show, worked with award-winning, multi-platinum production teams, with artists like Madonna, David Bowie, Travis Scott, and Shawn Mendes. And today, we had him on the podcast in the past, you should totally go check that out if you haven't yet, it's a great interview.

Michael Walker:
But he had another piece of really super-valuable wisdom to be able to share with you, and so we wanted to bring him back on here to talk a little bit about this other side of the music industry that he has a lot of experience in. Which is, I'm really about, how do you get a publishing deal for your music, and what are the biggest mistakes or challenges that artists make when it comes to collecting their assets and really getting a publishing deal at the end? So, Kevin, thanks so much for coming back on here, and excited to talk today.

Kevin Williams:
Pleased to be here, great to be here. Just got to correct you on one thing, some of those credits, Madonna, Shawn Mendes, I can't take credit for those. But, that's good, appreciate the shout out there. The other thing I wanted to... It's all good. The other thing I wanted to say was that yeah, the topic here is going to be really fun to talk about for me. But also, I wanted to just point out that yeah, I am... One of my companies is Sessionwire of course, but my other company, my entity here is Music Mentor Group. So, a lot of what I'm going to talk about with you this morning on Artist Development and that process of singer/songwriters and their development will be more related to the Music Mentor Group than it really is to Sessionwire. Although, I use Sessionwire for all of those sessions as well, just to clarify.

Michael Walker:
Awesome, thank you for the clarification. And just also to double clarify as well with Music Mentor, people are listening to this right now might hear Music Mentor and think that... We have our Music Mentor Program as well, that's sort of about interviewing mentors. So, that's a different Music Mentor Group. But also, same idea, just different kinds of focal points, and different kinds of mentorship, and super awesome. So, great, specifically talking about that problem of figuring out, how do I get my songs ready for a publishing deal, or how do I get a publishing deal in the first place? What would you say are some of the biggest challenges or mistakes that you see musicians struggling with when it comes to getting a publishing deal?

Kevin Williams:
Well, if we start from the beginning, it's about organization of your songs. We'll just from now on call it your catalog of songs. And really, to keep it real simple it's about your volume of how many songs you write. There's a misconception I guess with maybe people who are new to this process, that if I... Say for instance, if I connect with somebody and say, "How many songs have you got that you can actually play and perform if you're a singer or songwriter?" And they'll go, "Oh, lots." And I go, "What's lots?" "Well, five, maybe six." And I go, "That's not lots." Lots would be dozens more than that, for instance. So, I think that concept is lost, it's not just lost on new singer/songwriters. I think even on experienced singer/songwriters in that sense, they don't realize that to some degree it's a numbers thing.

Kevin Williams:
Like if you write a hundred songs, in those hundred songs 5% of them are likely to be extraordinary songs, possibly, but not in five songs, that percentage will actually have a chance, just think of it that way. So, volume of songs is a huge issue. And the other part of that I would say that goes hand-in-hand with it is, what state are your songs in? Could you perform them if you go out up in front of a group of people, you're a singer/songwriter, you play guitar, maybe piano, that kind of thing. How many could you actually just sit, and do a little, small concert for instance, whatever it is? It could be a podcast, it could be whatever. How many could you actually play? And that's different than maybe dozens of ideas for choruses, for verses, for hooks, just ideas.

Kevin Williams:
And until all those ideas are organized enough into a cohesive thing that you can call a song, they're just little ideas. They're not really useful unless you can have somebody help you sort of organize that aspect of it. So, let's say hypothetically Michael, you had 10 songs and you and I started to work. And I said, "Okay, you can actually play those 10 songs?" "Yeah." "Let me hear them," I would actually record you doing it because I'd like to hear them side by side. And then I'd say if, how many other ideas for choruses and verses and hooks and whatever? I'm not trying to say every song has to have the same composition, but what little ideas have you got floating around? You go, "I've got lots of ideas." Okay, where are they?

Kevin Williams:
Are they in little notebooks, are they on your computer, is it like... Where are they? And that brings up another subject, singer/songwriters aren't necessarily very organized in where they put all of those pieces that I'm alluding to, and they might be all over the place. So there's that aspect of it, and then there's the idea of having a coach or a mentor that you can bounce ideas off of with all of that, and say, "Okay, let's go through the songs that you actually can play through. Let's organize them, and type out all of your lyrics properly so that we can see them and work on them together, and assimilate what you're trying to say. Maybe there's a story in there. Is the story cohesive, were you telling the story in the wrong order?" We just go through these things.

Kevin Williams:
And then start to say, prioritize, how do we organize those in a better way and what do we organize them into? What is the vessel, or the container that has these things in it? So, I'm trying to throw a lot of things here at you really fast, but that's kind of the gist of it. Maybe to tie up just this question, if I'm not going on too long here, is, I'll give you two extremes of a singer/songwriter that might be struggling with the very thing I'm trying to explain. One extreme would be, this person just can't finish one song, because they can't let it go. It will never be good enough, no matter what I do it's just not good enough, and I can't say it's finished, so I'm stuck. That's one extreme on one side.

Kevin Williams:
The other extreme is, a person has hundreds and hundreds of ideas, and they're floating all over the place. And they can't organize them in a cohesive way to turn them into something that is a song, so they've got an awful lot of maybe brilliant ideas, but they're little tidbits with no cohesive organization to them. That's the other extreme. And then I can tell you that this, this is a problem with seasoned songwriters to organize themselves this way. They really need to have someone to coach them, and reign them in, and find some balance in all of that. So, that's kind of what the heart of what you're asking is, how does that work? Because at the end of the day, if you are a singer/songwriter and you really wanted to maybe find homes for your songs through publishing, and you also want to perform them, or one or the other, doesn't really matter.

Kevin Williams:
But if you really do want to organize yourself so you can present yourself to a publisher, then especially you have to get organized. So, how do you do that? That's kind of what is at the heart of what you're asking me.

Michael Walker:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), that's so good, there's a lot of value bombs to dissemble there. One point that you made that I feel like is so important that is overlooked a lot of the times is just the quantity, like having as many songs as possible, and how out of those hundred songs you'll probably have at least a few of them, like five of them that are extraordinary, that make up for the other 95. If 95 of them flop, well, five of them would kind of carry you forward. And just like that 80-20 rule in general, is such a magical-

Kevin Williams:
Yep, very much so.

Michael Walker:
... magical rule. Yeah, it sounds like one thing you're describing too is just about, you're taking your creativity, taking your music and your songs, and you're turning them into assets, like turning these ideas, these loose, kind of rambling... These things, and constructing them, positioning them, packaging them so they become an asset, which is a really, really valuable mindset to even just get in the habit of seeing the world. It's like, "How can I package these resources in a way that's valuable, how do I create assets?" Super cool. And one quick example that I remember hearing this story that's super relevant to what you're explaining with, the quantity versus getting wrapped up in trying just to make the perfect song.

Michael Walker:
Like, one song, you're spending all of your time trying to get this one song perfect, versus just writing 100 songs and choosing like, the best five. And I'm probably going to butcher this story a little bit, because I don't remember the exact details, but you could probably Google it and find it. But basically, there was a study that an art teacher did where they had their class, and they divided them into two sections, and they were making pottery. And one of the halves the teacher said, "Basically you have one chance to make the perfect pot, and you can rework it, you can re-sculpt it, but there's one pot, and you're going to get graded on the quality by the end of it."

Michael Walker:
And then for the other half they said, "You can make as many as you want, you can make as many as you want and they can all be happy. But we'll choose your best one at the end, the best-quality one." And at the end, what they found was by far the side of the class that created as much quantity as possible ended up creating the best-quality pottery, because they had more practice, more experience, they had kind of released more, and learned through the process of iterating versus the one that was just trying to get it all perfect from the start. Which, again, there's probably pieces that I got wrong.

Kevin Williams:
No, that was perfect.

Michael Walker:
But a really good example to showcase what you were just saying.

Kevin Williams:
No, it's perfect, because that's exactly it. The iteration, and the learning process, and you move on. And I know so many people that I remember in my career, Brian Addams was a master at that. He didn't get hung up on getting stuck on, he just moved on, learn from that, move on, learn from that, move on, learn from that, move on. And that's hard to do, because they become really personal to you. "I really want it to be great, so I can't let go." Well, you've got to get over that. Just move on, and learn by the process. Now, if you can have someone help mentor you, that can accelerate that process because it's like anything else, somebody... If you go to a gym I guess, I mean, I haven't had this happen to me. But if somebody is helping you work out, it's feedback, and you have somebody that knows what they're doing, and that helps you to learn and move through that process, it's exactly like that.

Kevin Williams:
And it's not like you have to write a lot of songs for the sake of writing a lot of songs and don't care about them, that's not it either. You care about each one, each one is your baby, and you care about it, and you want to move on. But you have to move on, or else you won't learn. And that's a key part of it. The other weird thing about people now, and I think this was even from our generation was a problem. It's, people will dive in and want to do a demo, and spend a lot of money with a studio or a producer or something way too prematurely. And if anything, it's just... First of all, it's a waste of money in my opinion, I'll accept it's my opinion. If you want to start spending money on recording, you need to be organized to such a degree first, which is work and discipline and time, and it's not really gratifying.

Kevin Williams:
Like, I went to the studio, and I got this demo done, and aha, it's amazing, you get to hear yourself. Well, sorry, it's just... I personally think there's not a lot of benefit to that. For me, if I want to listen to somebody's music and I can really evaluate their singing and their songwriting as an asset in the way we're talking about, I need to hear all of the songs that they are capable of playing side-by-side without any distractions. For instance, if you came to me and said, "Hey Kevin, I got these 20 songs," that'd be pretty good. 20 is at least something. I personally think, I've never seen this in a textbook, but I know people that I respect and I've brought it up with them, never seen this written down, where's the magic number where you've got a catalog that's big enough, someone will take you seriously.

Kevin Williams:
And for whatever weird reason, it's 50 songs. And I don't know, it could be 100, it could be 10, I don't know. But for whatever weird reason, 50 seems to be this magic number. Somebody will take you seriously, "How many songs you got?" "Well, a little over 50." "Whoa, that's pretty serious." So let's just say that you've got a bunch of songs, and I want to hear your songs. Well, what I don't want to hear is all your songs produced by different people, recorded in different times at different situations. I would just rather hear your songs in a very raw, unadulterated presentation. For instance, if you're a singer/songwriter that can play acoustic guitar and sing, I want to hear your 20 songs, just you with a microphone in front of you. No studio treatment, nothing, just put the microphone where it picks up your voice and your guitar.

Kevin Williams:
Mono, I don't care. Make it stereo if you want to make it nicer, sounds nicer. But, it doesn't matter. But, I want to skip through all the songs you've done side by side, and hear your progression through your songs. I like to know, what was the first one, what was the 20th one, and what happened in between? And hear if you can hear your progression as a songwriter, moving forward. So, that's a key thing for me anyway, and I know a lot of people that I respect and trust, they will say that's true. You're distracted by all the different recordings, and they don't really help me. There is a kind of an instant gratification that us as human beings have, and we just want to get to that magic place faster. But for some things, there's a certain level of discipline that's required to be able to do any craft properly.

Kevin Williams:
Whether it's audio engineering, music production, singing, yourself as a performer, your songwriting, all these things, they all are a craft. And you can fast track them all, you can try to fast track them the best you can. But ultimately, they take time, and effort, and concentration, and discipline to really be great at them. So for me, building that catalog is all that process. Very quickly here, I'll tell you that I've done this with a lot of bands over my career, is that I will tell them that. And I will say, because I've played in lots of bands in my career, and I'll ask them, "What is your favorite song when you guys play as a band live?" And not always, but usually always, this is what comes up. I'll say, "How many songs do you guys play live?"

Kevin Williams:
"Well, we've got like a set of 15 to 20," or whatever it is. "Okay. What is your favorite song?" And typically, what everybody will say in a roundabout way once you get it out of them, it's the most current song you just as a band can play. And it pretty well comes up this way, which is interesting. So, let's say you've got song number one, song number 20. And song number 20 in your rehearsal space, you just barely get through it without screwing up. Obviously you could play it way better, but the energy that's embedded in that performance the first time you can all play through it at the same time is phenomenal, because it's new, it's fresh, it's exciting, it's your newest song, so that's why it's your favorite. But it doesn't mean it's your best song, it just means it's the one that you as a band playing right now have the most energy attached to.

Kevin Williams:
Now, if I listen to those 20 songs of that band in the most raw condition, just like I said, a microphone in a rehearsal space, play all 20 songs. I'd like to hear all your songs that way, so I can skip through them really quickly and hear what you've done from song one to song 20. And I might pick out song number three, that's your best song. And they go, "Number three," and you don't play it with that energy anymore because it's an older song. But, it might be your best song. Now, I don't know if any of that made any sense, but that's kind of how it works, just so you know. It's just about the energy, and the excitement, and which songs you're playing. If you can play all 20 with the same energy and excitement, that's the way it should be. But not necessarily in a real world will it be like that, right?

Michael Walker:
That's definitely true.

Kevin Williams:
So, I might not be able to go through all these songs and listen to them, and then go, "Really, what are the best songs in that group?" And again, if you had 20, that'd be certainly better than 10. If you had 50, that'd certainly be better than 20, and so on and so on. The singer/songwriters that have made the biggest impact in our industry, they live and eat and breathe songwriting, and they just love writing more and more songs, and they just get better and better at it. I should also add, I'm not trying to be a snob about what the song itself, when it's successful, has to be either. Like I know there's a lot of people who, in my career, have talked about a hit. What's a hit? What's a radio-friendly hit? There is no radio anymore.

Kevin Williams:
What is a hit even anymore? Well, a lot of people just think it's, and it can be, it's an intentional way of writing a song that isn't so much about the song itself as a great song giving back to anybody, it's just designed to hit certain marks that will make it successful so it sells. I'm not, by the way, trying to promote here that's how you should design your songwriting. I mean, I honestly think if someone writes a really great song and it turns into something that the masses love, it's either very deliberate in the way I'm describing, or it's just, that's the way that person writes, and it just happened to hit the right note with the masses, and no-one's trying to intentionally craft a song that's a moneymaking song, it just is.

Kevin Williams:
And that's okay. Like, if you happen to write songs the masses love, and they're amazing songs and they turn into so-called hits, wow, that's pretty darn cool. But to try to deliberately do it, that's a different conversation I won't dive into here. For people listening, I'm not trying to promote that you intentionally sit down and write songs so they become hits, or moneymaking endeavors. I mean, you would hope your music makes you money, that's a good thing. But I'm not trying to advocate, that's why you do it. You should write songs because you love songwriting.

Michael Walker:
All right, let's take a quick break from the podcast so I can tell you about a free special offer that we're doing right now exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with a community of driven musicians and connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast, or if you just want to know the best way to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you. Right now we're offering a free two week trial to our Music Mentor Coaching Program, and if you sign up in the show notes below you're going to get access to our entire Music Mentor content vault for free.

Michael Walker:
The vault's organized into four different content pillars, the first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and last but not least the business. When you sign up, you unlock our best in-depth master classes from a network of world-class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting edge strategies right now for growing your music business. On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly Live Masterminds, where our highest-level modern musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music. Then once a month, we're going to have our Music Mentor Spotlight series, and that's where we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now.

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And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top-level music mentors. So, a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast are there live, interacting with you personally. So, imagine being able to connect with them directly. On top of all that, you'll get access to our private Music Mentor community, and this is definitely one of my favorite parts of Music Mentor, and maybe the most valuable is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists, and link up, and collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now, sign up for free.

Michael Walker:
From there, check out all of the amazing content, connect with the community, and sign up for the live masterclasses that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast, supporting the show, so don't miss out. Go sign up for free now, and let's get back to our interview. Yeah, thanks for clarifying. And yeah, what you're touching on is kind of a delicate conversation for us as artists, as sort of the balance of writing for ourselves, and writing for artistic expression. And then also wanting to be successful, and wanting to be commercially successful, and kind of how do we balance that? And I think a big fear for a lot of artists is that we might be seen as, "Selling out," or inauthentic, or lose our artist's integrity.

Michael Walker:
Which doesn't necessarily have to be the case just because you're also trying to be commercially successful, right?

Kevin Williams:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Michael Walker:
A lot of times you can have your cake and you can eat it too, right? But there's so much-

Kevin Williams:
Michael, you're absolutely right, and it is a sensitive subject. So, I think people just need to be clear on what their outcome and intention's supposed to be. If at one extreme, all you do is write music to make money for no other reason, you want to figure out the craft to such a degree that it doesn't matter to you from an artistic place, it's about it has to have a monetary successful value to it, that's one extreme. The other is the complete polar opposite, "I don't care if it ever makes money, it's just this Nirvana place that I go to, and I love my music, and I hope other people do. But if they don't, it doesn't matter." And there's everything in between. I would say, whatever place that you pick within that extreme, just be honest with yourself, it's okay.

Kevin Williams:
I want to balance those things in exactly the same way that you describe, but be honest, don't tell yourself that you're all this artistic person when in truth you're not being honest, and it's much more of the, "I need to make money from it," part. Because I've seen that with people too, just be honest, and that's fine. And if you happen to write songs that are popular to the masses, and they seem to be kind of skewed to that one side, but that's what you write, that's how you sound, that's who you are. True to yourself, true to your heart, that's fine, that's great.

Michael Walker:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), absolutely, yeah. And it seems like there are a lot of cases where the same... It's kind of like, we all are a big block of ice, and if you kind of chisel it out then you can make something beautiful, and you can make something commercially viable, intentionally make something commercially viable, but also make sure that it's in alignment, and it's congruent with who you are and your artistic expression. But, you can kind of balance those two, right?

Kevin Williams:
Well-said, that's exactly it, yep.

Michael Walker:
Sweet, I love conversations like this. I mean, I think songwriting is so at the core of who we are as musicians, and so important. So, I always appreciate being able to have a conversation with someone like you. Let's dive a little bit deeper into really one of the main things that we wanted to dig into, was how to create assets, and how to prepare the songs, prepare your catalog so that you have something valuable, and that you're prepared to be able to get a publishing deal. So, maybe we could go into, are there any other big mistakes, or common mistakes, or challenges that songwriters run into when it comes to getting a publishing deal?

Kevin Williams:
Well again, it goes back to how you organize the assets. You need to be able to present your assets, the songs themselves. Your lyrics written out, your catalog organized and databased in such a way that it's very tight, cohesive and organized, and you can just give it to somebody and say, "Here." If it's a publisher they will look at it and not go, "Well, that's not a form that I'm comfortable with." It has to be in such a form that they will look at it and recognize right away that I don't have to... I wish it was like this, when the person gave it to me, or I wish it was like this. And that is a huge part of it. Obviously, if you work with a mentor who's able to help you with your songwriting in a coach-type feedback way, by the time you've got your catalog organized, theoretically the bulk of what you've worked on, if you're going to present it to anybody, is organized in such a way that they can literally just look at a spreadsheet, let's say, look at all your songs that could be categorized if you think you write in different styles, for instance.

Kevin Williams:
That's okay. It doesn't mean you write in one style, maybe you like a lot of different styles, but you've organized them in such a way. And then the person listening, or the person viewing would be able to listen to those demos in such a way they can say, "This is song number one, here's the demo for it. Here's where it's located." Don't have to hunt for anything, don't have to search for anything, it's all presented in a certain way. Even the lyric sheet itself, if you type your lyrics out for people, there's a certain, I don't know, form to it, a visual sense to it that's just easy to look at and consistent. So if you've got magic number, 50 songs let's say, or 10, or 20, I just... I wouldn't suggest you go to a publisher with not enough songs, personally.

Kevin Williams:
I just, you've got a shot at somebody, they got... Their attention, and now you're going to give them not enough. Wait, get more, and then do that. But if you go to them and they can consistently look through all of your lyrics, for all of your songs, and hear each of the songs in a non-distracting way where they hear the song, not how it was produced, not what it might sound like in the studio, just the song. At the end of the day the songs are the songs, and if the songs are great, yeah, the production will enhance that, will bring these things out. But they aren't going to make a crappy song better, they'll just... The song needs to be strong in itself, really in most genres. Not every genre, but most genres. So the form is, and what it's delivered to somebody in, to a publisher for instance is important, and consistent, and something that's not...

Kevin Williams:
You don't have to kind of read between the lines to figure out what the presentation is all about, that would be... The lyric sheets themselves, the song demos themselves, how they're organized with a spreadsheet of the whole catalog, all those things, real super-simple, tight and easy to understand if you give that package to somebody. They don't have to question where's something, or if I play song number five, where is it? It's just all organized, that's at the heart that that part that I think you're asking about.

Michael Walker:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), awesome. It sound like what you're saying is that, once you have the songs recorded and you have at least 10, 20, 50 songs would be amazing as kind of like a nice target, then really the next step is making sure that you organize them so that it's as simple and streamlined as possible for the publisher as it can be. And so when they click on it, they don't have to search, they don't have to look around, they don't have to be confused, it's just all there in the spreadsheet. And so, having a spreadsheet that has all of the songs listed out, along with lyric sheets that are well-presented, and maybe the style of song and some other breakdowns, is something that's going to be really, really helpful, and improve your chances of getting a good publisher for it.

Kevin Williams:
Yeah. And then the step after that then evolves into pre-production for the recording. Now, you might not have a budget, you probably won't have a budget to record that many songs. But, if you've got that many songs to pick from you could pitch those also to a producer who would be interested in working with you, that might also be able to pitch that to a publisher, or is a publisher and a producer, possibly. And if that happens, then the producer is then going to go to you and say, "All right, you've obviously had somebody work with you on your songwriting, on the craft, and I can see that these, the organization, song structure and the story that it's telling, that's part of the deal as well." If all of that is organized in such a way that I can tell, and I can tell if a producer...

Kevin Williams:
As a producer, that organization, if it's there. Then I'm going to say, "This is great work." Then I would pick up that for the recording portion of that, and I would have that to work with to be able to build the production of the actual demo, or the recording. And this was a thing that happened in our generation, which is called pre-production, and you did that before you went into the studio. So you didn't waste a bunch of money in the studio, unless you got a lot of money and a record label that was throwing money at it, or an investor or something. You just can't afford to go in and try things out in the studio, unless you're U2 or something. I mean, that does happen, but not for the majority, the vast majority of people.

Kevin Williams:
So if you've got your songs in that state that we're talking about, then somebody can take it from there and be able to organize themselves in the recording process much better. For instance, I don't really want to dive deep into a song while we're recording in the studio, and start changing around the song structure and things, the arrangement. And maybe what is being said as far as the actual lyric in a certain spot, I mean it happens, obviously. But, you try to avoid that. If there's a line, and I'm coaching someone recording vocals, that's like a money line. It's the main part, the thrust of the song, maybe it's the hook of the song. Maybe it's just one line in a verse, but it's such an important line that has to come out with energy and passion and intensity.

Kevin Williams:
If I'm producing that vocal, I need to know that's happening, so I can help coach that person to get to that place. If a singer is singing a line that is so important, the most important line in the song, you'd better sing it like it's the most important line in the song. Because if you don't, then it's not going to come across. The weird thing about recording anything is that there's magic in performances, and somehow they get captured. And when they get captured, they've either had someone coach them very well, or it was just in their heart to sing it or play it that way. And at least for me, when something is sung or played in a certain way that it's just extraordinary, I get a little rush up my spine. It's like, "Oh, there it is."

Kevin Williams:
And that's what we all wait for, is that thing that happens. So, how can you coach somebody to get to that line and say, "You can't just sing it, and it might be perfectly in tune, it might be perfectly..." As far as it's sitting in the rhythm properly, anything, it could be perfect, but soulless. And if it's soulless and it's perfect, who cares? Maybe it's not perfect, but you and I are listening to it going, "Oh my God, that was amazing." This is a weird way to say it, but sometimes the most lamest line in the world, like say I wrote a song, Michael, and this is my best song. What's it called? It's called, "I Will Always Love You," that's the line. Okay, well, that's kind of, how many times have people said that?

Kevin Williams:
Well, here's the weird thing. I could sing a song, or a singer could sing a song with that line, "I Will Always Love You," those are the lyrics by the way. And somehow, you and I listen to it and go, "Wow, wow." And we don't know why, because there's magic there, because something happened. Those are the things we're missing in music in my opinion a lot these days, not completely. But people have forgotten the magic, and the magic has to be there. It's a huge reason of why we listen to music. We don't know it but we go, "Wow, why does that song... Why is it affecting me this way?" So I just know, you have to go through these processes to get there. And if you're going to produce a vocal track, you really have to have...

Kevin Williams:
You can't not have lyric sheets, and you can't not have gone through the work of wordsmithing that, and the arrangement, and all of that when you get there, is just the delivery. You're not having to think through, "Maybe we should change this," or something. You're just, it's the delivery. Make it happen, tell the story, get people excited about that line. Why? Because you believe it in your heart, in your gut. It has to come from that place. It's true for playing a guitar solo, or anything. Play it like you mean it, somehow, some way. I know it sounds real simple, and maybe even corny to some degree, but it's not. It's exactly the way it should be.

Michael Walker:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), I love it. No, you're right, it's like the number... It's the most foundational part of it, is the magic, capturing that magic. And it's like the creative impulse, the creative energy that makes music so amazing, right?

Kevin Williams:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
One thing that I would love to dive a little bit deeper into, because I think it's so important, and you've talked about it a few times. But, this idea of mentorship, or finding the right guidance. And the way I look at it, it's sort of like Abraham Lincoln famously talks about sharpening the saw. And the idea is that, if you try to cut down a tree with a dual blade, then you can spend so much time and energy just trying to cut down this tree. But if you took five minutes to sharpen the saw, then counterintuitively it would be way, way faster, it would only take you minutes, as opposed to maybe days. But a lot of times people feel like, "Oh man, I don't have the time to sharpen my saw, or I don't have the resources to invest into sharpening my saw, because I need to cut down this tree."

Michael Walker:
And counterintuitively, it actually would make it a lot better. And that's one analogy I think that describes mentorship really well, it's basically sharpening the saw. And writing 100 songs is going to be a way different experience if you have what you're talking about with that guidance, or that feedback every single song, so you can actually go deeper. It's literally sharpening the saw after each stroke of the... It's like a self-sharpening saw. So, I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about that idea. And for anyone who's listening or watching this right now, what are some different options? How do they find the right mentor, and how do they build a relationship with that mentor to be able to significantly reduce the amount of time that they need to take in order to be successful?

Kevin Williams:
Okay. Well, first of all my Music Mentor Group, which we're kind of talking about here a little bit, it's musicmentorgroup.com, is a group of mentors from different disciplines. What I'm trying to do, and it's still in its very early stages, I believe in the mentoring process, and people that I highly respect see the future of education as morphing away from the way that it's currently been. Not to say universities and colleges won't have a place, but the mentoring process just fits better with people. It's like, at this point taking, say, a university degree, and it's a shotgun effect of everything in the music industry, I don't think is very useful. If you said, "I need a micro degree that targets me like a laser into a certain thing within the music industry as a degree," yes, that's kind of more the way that education's going.

Kevin Williams:
But I think mentoring is kind of the same thing, except you learn by doing it with people that have done that. So, in my Music Mentor Group I have different mentors from different disciplines, for instance. So, when I'm doing something I might say, "Now I need to hand you off to this mentor, because this mentor has expertise as a mentor within that aspect and that discipline of the music industry." Not that I don't, but I think that would be a better mentor for that particular subject. So, the mentoring piece for me is really the future of where, and I think in all walks of life, not just the music industry, where people are going to get the most amount of value. And the same way you're saying, because you can sharpen your saw, the metaphor's very good.

Kevin Williams:
Because you don't have to waste time going, "Well, I haven't done that, but this person has." Why not model somebody who's done something, and then learn from that and absorb that information, than try to bang your head against the wall over and over again to get to the same place?" I mean, no matter how you look at it, the process of finding a mentor if you can is hugely important. The problem is, most of the time how do you find a mentor? Sometimes people are lucky, they just know somebody, or they offer, "I'd love to mentor you," or whatever. But, going out and hunting for a mentor is not the easiest thing to do. Because, the type of person you might want to mentor, you might feel is unreachable. Like, "How would I even reach out to that person?" By the way, just reach out, won't hurt.

Kevin Williams:
What's the worst that can happen? They'll say no, or they might be glad to. So, reach out. So, in my Music Mentor Group, I wanted to streamline that, so people can access people easier, without that fear of, "Well, what if I get a no?" Well, the no's not the end of the world, just try again. So, I guess to quickly answer that part, if you can find someone that you can... And it's also a trust relationship too, you have to trust the person cares about passing on that information to you. Like kind of talk about our generation has this specialized knowledge that we were given, and it's all over the place for a lot of us. Like for me, it's a lot of hats that I wear. Not just one particular discipline, it's quite a few.

Kevin Williams:
But, I have mentors that I know have much more of that, more specific information in mentoring than other things that I am good at, but maybe not as good as they are at. So, at the end of the day, yeah. I mean, find a mentor, and work with that person, and build that relationship with that person. By the way, this is not something that's going to be, "Hey, I'll take a workshop for a month or something, and then I'm done." Mentoring tends to be a relationship that's an ongoing thing, maybe for quite some time if you really want to do it properly. So, not sure if I answered everything you wanted in that one, but I tried.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, no, that was perfect, yeah. I agree 100%, I think mentorship is something that's... Yeah, it's almost baked into our DNA as humans. I think there's a reason that in every hero's journey, or every great blockbuster movie, there's this character that comes along that's like Yoda, or Dumbledore, or it's the mentor, and they're there to help guide. And I think that there's something interesting too, that I think all of us, inside of us we have like two sides of the same coin, where we have this... We need to find a mentor who can help us along our journey, along our path to achieve our goals. And also, I think that we have it within us as well to help, and pay it forward, and to be a mentor to help other people as well.

Michael Walker:
And it is so interesting to see just the state of the world right now with the internet, and online coaching, and my... I have so much respect and admiration for anyone like you that is taking their wisdom, taking what they've learned, their experience, and helping to ultimately alleviate suffering, alleviate suffering for other people to shorten the gap by sharing the lessons that you've learned through the time and energy and money that you spent. I think there's a really noble... It's a noble cause. And so, I think that that idea, finding a mentor, is so important. And there is an interesting quote too, something along the lines of, when the student is ready, the mentor appears, right?

Kevin Williams:
Yep.

Michael Walker:
I love that quote. And I think you're so right that a mistake is thinking that the people you want to connect with are unreachable, that you can never connect with, that you're not going to be able to get in touch. And in some cases, sure, like if you reach out to someone who's like the most successful in the world right now, it might be hard to get a hold with them. But, it certainly doesn't hurt to reach out to as many people as possible. And one other note alongside of that too, I think, is, we talk about this a lot on the podcast, because we're interviewing a lot of successful people like yourself. And almost everyone speaks to this idea of approaching relationships from a providing value, and contributing to another person, and thinking about that first, and thinking about, "How can I serve, how can I provide value in this relationship?"

Michael Walker:
How that's been a key point of their success. And I think certainly when it comes to finding mentorship as well, in any communication if you're reaching out to someone new, start with that focal point. Like, how can I serve this person, how can I provide value? And I know a lot of producers and very successful people that, if an intern comes along and says, "Hey, I would love to learn from you, and I'm willing to work for free. How can I serve, how can I help out?" They're going to be like, "Sure. So, we have X, Y and Z that we could plug you into," and that could be a great foot in the door to find a mentor. So, it's absolutely possible to make those connections if you're proactive and willing to do the work.

Kevin Williams:
Yeah, totally. Well, I've got to wrap it up with you here pretty quick. And just wanted to mention to your thought about giving back, that's a huge part of it. And with the hardly any exception that I can think of, all the people that I'm connected with, they love this idea, they want to give back. So it's not like this... I never really thought about it, sometimes I go, "I never thought about it, but you know, I think I would like that." But, I never hear a negative, "No, I wouldn't be into that." Anybody seems to have the specialized knowledge in different disciplines, wants to give back. So, you hit the nail on the head with that for sure, and yeah. Just reach out to people, sure.

Michael Walker:
Right, absolutely. Well hey, thank you so much Kevin for coming on here again, and sharing some of your experience and wisdom. And for anyone who's listening to this right now and would like to connect, or reach out, or learn more about Music Mentor Group, what would be the best place for them to go to connect more?

Kevin Williams:
Well, you go to the website, www.musicmentorgroup.com, and there's lots of information there. Some of the website's still under construction, some of the services that will be there aren't in the menus, aren't active yet. But for the most part, you'll get the idea. You'll see the mentors that are currently involved there. You can reach me at kevin@mentormusicgroup.com, that's another email address, that's fine. And I will do a free session with anybody that wants to connect with me, just to walk them through what you and I talked about. And no sales or anything, it's not about sales, it's just about building relationships with people. So, very welcome to reach out to me there.

Michael Walker:
Wow, that's super-valuable, yeah. I highly recommend that people take you up on that in terms of reaching out, building a relationship, building a connection. Like always, we'll make sure to put the links in the show notes so that you guys can dig in and learn more. And I think we're also... At some point we should totally sync up, and I would love to do a presentation, or a training, or something for your Music Mentor Group as well. So, we'll probably-

Kevin Williams:
I would love that, yeah.

Michael Walker:
... if you guys join Music Mentor Group, then you'll probably hear a familiar voice, or a face in there at some point. But Kevin, thanks again, you're awesome, appreciate you. And, I'll talk to you again soon.

Kevin Williams:
It's always a pleasure, Michael. Look forward to another one, maybe. We'll see.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then that'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I'll look forward to seeing you on our next episode.